If you found out gastronomic realism was false, would you be indifferent to what you ate? Would you by equally willing to eat garbage or radioactive waste as you would pizza or ice cream?
Why should I agree that what you consider reasons are “real reasons” and what I consider reasons aren’t real? There actually are descriptive facts about the relation between means and ends, so if I opted to refer to these as “reasons” they would be “real reasons.” They’d be real, and they’d be “reasons.” Whereas I think your notion of reasons isn’t meaningful or practically relevant.
For comparison, the non-naturalist notions of reasons I hear about from you, Parfit, and others remind me of a quote Dennett likes to quote from Lee Seigel:
“I’m writing a book on magic”, I explain, and I’m asked, “Real magic?” By real magic people mean miracles, thaumaturgical acts, and supernatural powers. “No”, I answer: “Conjuring tricks, not real magic”. Real magic, in other words, refers to the magic that is not real, while the magic that is real, that can actually be done, is not real magic.”
I feel exactly this way about your notion of reasons. It seems like “real magic,” which doesn’t actually exist, and the simultaneous dismissal of the magic that is real, which is somehow not real magic. Just the same, the kinds of “reasons” I’m happy to say that there are do exist, while what you think of us as reasons don’t exist. So I could just as readily maintain that antirealists like me do endorse the existence of real reasons, while (at least some) normative realists endorse in addition or instead the existence of reasons that aren’t real.
Not only do I reject normative realism, I reject the way realists frame realism. I don’t concede to you that the notion of reasons you endorse are “real” reasons. They are precisely the kinds of reasons I think aren’t real.
Well, I know you don't think they're real. But if they are real, only my reasons genuinely count in favour of courses of actions -- your reasons motivate you, but they don't provide genuine reasons in the counting in favour of sense.
You'd still have to offer an account of what that would mean and why someone should care. And you can't get there with just a pile of words. The kinds of "reasons" you propose would be "real" and that would "genuinely count in favour of courses of actions" would be practically irrelevant to me even if they were real, and would make no difference in how I acted. In other words, if you convinced me right now that there were stance-independent normative facts, and even convinced me what those facts were, I would completely ignore them. You can call them "genuine" reasons that "count in favour of courses of actions" all you like, and I simply would not care and would be incapable of being motivated by them.
Suppose it turned out some strange form of normative realism was true, and that it was just a stance-independent normative fact that you had genuine reasons that counted in favor of you doing things like scream at tables all day, or convert all matter in the universe into bananas. Would you go ahead and do those things?
I would not, for a very simple reason: I don't want to. Your notion of normativity and reasons divorces your notion of what you ought to do from your own goals and desires, outsourcing what you ought to do to the whims of the universe. It's utterly bizarre, and only seems appealing so long as you flatter your sensibilities by imagining the universe happens to comport with what you yourself think you ought to do. But if your intuitions turned out to be miscalibrated about the substantive content of the normative facts, you could end up discovering requirements to act in ways wildly out of sync with your personal values, e.g., they could have nothing to do with utilitarianism. And under such circumstances, normative realism would hold that you only had "genuine" reasons to perform these actions, but no "genuine" reasons to maximize utility. If that were the case, I personally would say "Well, so much for genuine reasons, I'm still going to maximize utility." If you wouldn't, I'm puzzled as to why. Let's even suppose that the moral values that turn out to be true aren't that strange - what if it's some form of deontology. Would you abandon utilitarianism for some form of deontology? If so, why?
Global error theory about stance-independent normative facts? If so, yea, that's very likely a rare position, but it's closer to what I think the strongest positions are so I'm happy to endorse something very like it myself.
I reject all stance-independent normative facts, but I also reject error theories. I don't even think global error theory goes far enough (if by that you mean error theory about all stance-independent normative facts, including both moral and nonmoral norms).
I have a post about why I disagree with this way of thinking: https://joecarlsmith.substack.com/p/against-the-normative-realists-wager
I'll check it out.
Bold of you to assume that my ethical principals will stand up to the offer of 10,000$
This seems like a reductio of moral realism.
Not to me.
If you found out gastronomic realism was false, would you be indifferent to what you ate? Would you by equally willing to eat garbage or radioactive waste as you would pizza or ice cream?
No because there are still reasons to eat particular foods even if they're not objectively tasty.
Are there reasons to want $10,000 if antirealism is true?
But those aren't real reasons -- they're all reducible to descriptive claims.
Why should I agree that what you consider reasons are “real reasons” and what I consider reasons aren’t real? There actually are descriptive facts about the relation between means and ends, so if I opted to refer to these as “reasons” they would be “real reasons.” They’d be real, and they’d be “reasons.” Whereas I think your notion of reasons isn’t meaningful or practically relevant.
For comparison, the non-naturalist notions of reasons I hear about from you, Parfit, and others remind me of a quote Dennett likes to quote from Lee Seigel:
“I’m writing a book on magic”, I explain, and I’m asked, “Real magic?” By real magic people mean miracles, thaumaturgical acts, and supernatural powers. “No”, I answer: “Conjuring tricks, not real magic”. Real magic, in other words, refers to the magic that is not real, while the magic that is real, that can actually be done, is not real magic.”
I feel exactly this way about your notion of reasons. It seems like “real magic,” which doesn’t actually exist, and the simultaneous dismissal of the magic that is real, which is somehow not real magic. Just the same, the kinds of “reasons” I’m happy to say that there are do exist, while what you think of us as reasons don’t exist. So I could just as readily maintain that antirealists like me do endorse the existence of real reasons, while (at least some) normative realists endorse in addition or instead the existence of reasons that aren’t real.
Not only do I reject normative realism, I reject the way realists frame realism. I don’t concede to you that the notion of reasons you endorse are “real” reasons. They are precisely the kinds of reasons I think aren’t real.
Well, I know you don't think they're real. But if they are real, only my reasons genuinely count in favour of courses of actions -- your reasons motivate you, but they don't provide genuine reasons in the counting in favour of sense.
You'd still have to offer an account of what that would mean and why someone should care. And you can't get there with just a pile of words. The kinds of "reasons" you propose would be "real" and that would "genuinely count in favour of courses of actions" would be practically irrelevant to me even if they were real, and would make no difference in how I acted. In other words, if you convinced me right now that there were stance-independent normative facts, and even convinced me what those facts were, I would completely ignore them. You can call them "genuine" reasons that "count in favour of courses of actions" all you like, and I simply would not care and would be incapable of being motivated by them.
Suppose it turned out some strange form of normative realism was true, and that it was just a stance-independent normative fact that you had genuine reasons that counted in favor of you doing things like scream at tables all day, or convert all matter in the universe into bananas. Would you go ahead and do those things?
I would not, for a very simple reason: I don't want to. Your notion of normativity and reasons divorces your notion of what you ought to do from your own goals and desires, outsourcing what you ought to do to the whims of the universe. It's utterly bizarre, and only seems appealing so long as you flatter your sensibilities by imagining the universe happens to comport with what you yourself think you ought to do. But if your intuitions turned out to be miscalibrated about the substantive content of the normative facts, you could end up discovering requirements to act in ways wildly out of sync with your personal values, e.g., they could have nothing to do with utilitarianism. And under such circumstances, normative realism would hold that you only had "genuine" reasons to perform these actions, but no "genuine" reasons to maximize utility. If that were the case, I personally would say "Well, so much for genuine reasons, I'm still going to maximize utility." If you wouldn't, I'm puzzled as to why. Let's even suppose that the moral values that turn out to be true aren't that strange - what if it's some form of deontology. Would you abandon utilitarianism for some form of deontology? If so, why?
Even Parfit said that if moral realism isn't true, nothing really matters. There are no genuine reasons -- all the supposed reasons are built on sand.
Well, I think he was right.
Global error theory about stance-independent normative facts? If so, yea, that's very likely a rare position, but it's closer to what I think the strongest positions are so I'm happy to endorse something very like it myself.
I reject all stance-independent normative facts, but I also reject error theories. I don't even think global error theory goes far enough (if by that you mean error theory about all stance-independent normative facts, including both moral and nonmoral norms).